Jeff Wang is the Director of China Learning Initiatives at the Center for Global Education at Asia Society. This piece is part of a special RCW series on the U.S.-China geopolitical relationship. The views expressed here are the author’s own.
Before U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping sat down for dinner at Mar-a-Largo on April 6, Arabella, Trump’s 5-year-old granddaughter, was brought out to greet the Chinese guest. Her mother, Ivanka Trump, noted to the Chinese president that “this is to make you feel at home.” Thorny discussions on the nuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and an imbalanced trillion-dollar bilateral trade, to name just two, awaited. So one can imagine it came as a welcome relief to Xi to hear the first granddaughter recite familiar tunes and texts in his native tongue.
Arabella was confident; she sang in front of the Chinese first lady, an accomplished soprano. She recited text from the classical Chinese book of Sanzijing -- which began with the proclamation that “all are born with goodness,” counter to probably what the majority of the room believed on the matter of “original sin.” She was able to pull this off with a powerful tool, her mastery of the audience’s native language, in this case Mandarin, and she signaled respect and relatability. Sasha Obama had similarly practiced her Chinese with then-President Hu Jintao back in 2011, when she was 9 years old.
As Xi and Trump dug into their caesar salads, more than 1,200 educators from every corner of the United States were gathered in Houston for the 10th National Chinese Language Conference. George H.W. Bush, a native Houstonian and the 41st U.S. president, told attendees in a letter that, “your mission of educating the next generation of global citizens as to the importance of speaking Mandarin in order to enhance our U.S. bilateral relations abroad is more important today than ever before.” Another former president, George W. Bush, also told this audience that “learning a language -- somebody else’s language -- is a kind gesture. It’s a gesture of interest and is a fundamental way to reach out to somebody and say, 'I care about you.’”
Coincidence aside, never before had three American presidents expressed the power of learning Mandarin simultaneously. China and the United States have often disagreed on geopolitics, the flow of trade and investment, and their self-perceived roles on the global stage. Few would have predicted that within the space of a generation, China would come to contribute roughly one-third of global economic growth and would lift millions of people out of poverty. Yet fewer would have imagined, say, President Nixon’s daughter or President Reagan’s son showing off their Mandarin skills as their fathers brokered diplomacy with Chinese leaders.
In 2017, one-fifth of humanity use Chinese as their mother tongue, and in the socially and economically vibrant online and mobile world, Chinese-speaking internet users outnumber those of the United States, India, and Japan combined. At the same time, there are more Chinese currently learning English than there are people in the United States. So there is also something of a tug-of-war at play, over whether young people in America, and indeed around the world, should be learning Chinese for future success.
Here are the beginnings of an answer, in a quote from the late Nelson Mandela: "If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart." And here was U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, speaking during a visit to a Chinese university in 2011: “Speech -- communication -- is the currency of understanding. It's the currency with which we exchange ideas, from which flows the sense of whether one is being truthful or honest or sincere.”
The key message here is that speaking another language is about much more than getting directions, or facilitating a deal. Language is a currency for trust and respect; it provides bricks and mortar for building an ability to explore the beauty of diverse cultures, traditions, and historical perspectives.
Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd remarked that "learning another's language is a simple mark of respect." Rudd remains the only head of state of a major Western nation to speak Mandarin fluently. (Former U.S. President Herbert Hoover was supposedly fluent in Mandarin, though many accounts suggest his wife’s mastery of the language was far superior to his own.) Compared to conducting business or diplomacy through interpreters, Rudd argues that speaking the language of your counterpart leads to more effective exchanges, and yields far more rewarding results.
It is true that technology can facilitate exchanges across language barriers. I look forward to the day when advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning affords everyone a personal interpreter. But I would not trade that for the personal experience of learning to think and understand in another language. Foreign language study isn't just about training every student to replace a translator; it’s about building a society of citizens that invoke mutual trust, respect, and possess the disposition to collaborate. These are critical elements to forging a shared sense and responsibility for security and prosperity. In September 2015, President Barack Obama said at a joint press conference with visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping, “If our countries are going to do more together around the world, then speaking each other’s language, truly understanding each other, is a good place to start.”
Finally, from a purely personal development and fulfillment perspective, learning to speak Chinese is like acquiring a new spice to a cook -- it is a new palette to a painter, a new instrument to an orchestra, a new lens to a camera. We can’t augment our taste buds, cochlea, or retina, but luckily, when it comes to speech, we can literally acquire a new tongue.
I believe that making sure more of our young people learn and master a global language affords them not only advantages in career opportunities, but also the lifelong gift of fostering tolerance, sensitivity, and curiosity.
Put simply: The future holds more promise for the United States if more Americans become language students.
